In bid to speed the pace of enterprise adoption, blockchain trailblazer ConsenSys collaborates with AWS to offer a new service, Kaleido, a Blockchain Business Cloud that radically simplifies the creation and operation of private blockchain networks.

NEW YORK, May 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Companies are eager to capture the potential of blockchain but to date have struggled to move experimental projects forward into live production networks. ConsenSys today announced Kaleido, a new Blockchain Business Cloud aimed at speeding and simplifying enterprises' journey to using the technology. Kaleido is the first Software-as-a-Service featuring popular Ethereum packages Geth and Quorum, and is offered in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Additional first-of-a-kind capabilities include linking between private networks and the public Ethereum mainnet, integrated analytics, and support for multiple protocol options and consensus mechanisms. The platform runs on AWS and provides clients the ability to seamlessly connect to other popular AWS services, reducing the cost of real-world projects that often require complex integrations.

According to Gartner's 2018 CIO Survey, of 3,138 CIOs respondents "only 1% indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organizations."

Although organizations across many industries are increasingly evaluating blockchain, many are now coming to grips with the fact that there are significant hurdles to getting their arms around the technology. For example, a live blockchain network requires a shared IT infrastructure across all involved parties, which has proven to be difficult and costly. Many early adopters have spent millions of dollars and months or even years writing thousands of lines of custom code, only to stall or pull the plug on projects entirely.

Steve Cerveny, Kaleido Founder said, "If blockchain doesn't become dramatically easier to use, then companies will have to walk back their investments and our society will be far too slow in realizing blockchain's significant promise. We designed the Kaleido platform from scratch with new user experiences and tools to radically simplify the entire enterprise journey. This all-in-one Blockchain Business Cloud changes the economic equation of an enterprise blockchain project. By offering a full solution way beyond do-it-yourself scripts or templates, Kaleido significantly speeds up development and deployment cycles and dramatically lowers operating costs. What Salesforce did for CRMs, Kaleido will do for blockchain."

Kaleido streamlines the process of standing up secure, permissioned blockchain networks without sacrificing the ability to customize the environment. These networks offer all of the benefits of the underlying blockchain technology, while still maintaining the necessary levels of robustness, security, and performance. The platform onboards member organizations with ease and distributes ownership and control of the network among them according to defined and agreed upon governing policies that are automatically enforced.

Kaleido uniquely integrates the greater security and diversification of the public blockchain, or Ethereum mainnet, to enterprises running private chains on the platform. By permanently "anchoring" the private chain to the public blockchain through the Kaleido Relay, a network of companies can further reduce risk of after-the-fact collusion going unnoticed. Anchoring can occur automatically at regular checkpoints to provide greater "proof of settlement finality" over all transactions, as well as on demand for specific events such as a high value trade. For example, when a new member onboards into the group via a voting policy enforced on the private chain, a irrefutable proof of that decision can be written to the public chain including signatures and timestamps. By doing this, any chance of counterparty disputes about membership is eliminated.

Cerveny adds, "Public and private blockchains have been evolving largely independently for the last couple years. We knew that a next generation platform must focus on convergence between the two. Kaleido is bringing them together in a valuable and meaningful way for enterprises. And true to our mission, we are pushing the boundaries in this area and making it really easy for companies to tap into."

Kaleido is the first Blockchain Software as a Service (SaaS) available in the AWS Marketplace and is accessible across multiple AWS Regions around the world.

"We are thrilled to see innovative new services being built by ConsenSys within this emerging space," said Joshua Hofmann, GM and Global Lead, Software Partnerships, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "Kaleido is making blockchain more accessible and easier to use for our customers and even faster to securely connect their blockchain solutions to the rest of AWS's fleet of services. This creates a frictionless experience and streamlines integration with additional AWS services that our customers often leverage when deploying Blockchain solutions."

Kaleido is the first enterprise blockchain platform to utilize Ethereum, the most proven smart contract platform in the market today. The service offers the ability to switch between configurations of the underlying Ethereum protocol. For example, there are several consensus algorithms (RAFT, POA, and IBFT) that users can toggle between when configuring the Quorum and Geth packages.

ConsenSys is a founding member of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, a group of now more than 500 organizations dedicated to ensuring Ethereum meets the specific needs of companies.

"The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is a large and vibrant community," said Ron Resnick, Executive Director, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. "ConsenSys and AWS coming together to deliver a next generation Enterprise Ethereum service is a game-changer."

Kaleido has already been quietly piloted by several consortia. Justo Ortiz, Chairman of the Board for UnionBank said, "Our team was inspired to harness blockchain in order to reach farther into our rural communities of the Philippines. Many people are still financially excluded and we're looking to change that. In partnership with ConsenSys and running on the Kaleido platform, we successfully accelerated Project i2i into active pilot without the complexity and cost of starting from scratch."

Joseph Lubin, Co-founder of Ethereum and Founder of ConsenSys adds, "We are now entering a new era of simple and inclusive access to blockchain technology that cuts through the hype to advance stronger, more collaborative, business relationships previously out of reach. Kaleido is the first platform to radically simplify and speed the use of blockchain by companies across all industries. It also represents the first "dual mode" use of Ethereum, enabling private, permissioned Ethereum-based systems to link with public, permissionless Ethereum, in order to achieve an element of trustworthiness that has previously been unobtainable. This may be considered the first major link forged in the internet of blockchains."

More about ConsenSys ConsenSys is a global formation of technologists and entrepreneurs building the infrastructure, applications, and best practices to enable a decentralized world. The ConsenSys "hub" coordinates, incubates, accelerates, and spawns "spoke" ventures through development, resource sharing, investments and the formation of joint ventures. ConsenSys is dedicated to growing the Ethereum-based blockchain ecosystem through various domains including ConsenSys Solutions, ConsenSys Capital, ConsenSys Labs, and ConsenSys Academy. For more information, please visit www.ConsenSys.net.